ciao from italy!!

Ahhh! I’m in ITALY!! I cannot even believe it. Pictures do not do justice to this beautiful place. The BEAUTY here overwhelms me. Our plane took off Monday afternoon and it was about 10 hours… 10 hours is much longer than I thought. I tried to sleep but was way to anxious! So thankfully my friend Mary Cate was sitting next to me and we shared our excitement together and found different ways to occupy our time … one way was a Disney princess coloring book… the Italian man next to us told us his 5 year old daughter does that… but we didn’t really care because our biggest concern for about 10 hours was trying to stay in the lines and it was a fabulous feeling. We arrived in Ariccia (a- ree-cha) around 8:30am on Tuesday! They brought us to Chigi Palace where we are staying and gave us time to get settled and unpack.

we were so excited we got all we needed into ONE bag!!

on the bus when we got to Rome... lookin' a little rough, we know.

this is the Ariccia!

This is the Chigi Palace we get to stay in!

This is my little nook I will be living in for the next 3 months! :)

This is our kitchen I will be learning to cook Italian food in!! :)

Around 2 Cinzia [who goes everywhere and helps us out with whatever we need] took us around Ariccia and Albano (a neighboring town) and showed us where everything we need will be like the supermarket, bus/train stations, restaurants and much more! Then we went to our first Italian meal at a local restaurant, and they really do eat SO much!! They just kept brining more and more food!! BUT it was all so delicious!!

My first past DELICIOUS pasta meal!!

The second day, the showed us around Ariccia a little more. We got to see our classroom and our backyard…! 

our classroom!

this is the back of the palace!

some of our backyard :)

this was a bird cage back in the day

Some of our beautiful backyard... It use to be a house that burnt down. 

Ariccia in the sunset!

 Later in the evening Cinzia took us to the supermarket so we could get some food and whatever else we needed. It is about a mile up the hill... Italians are very much in shape. I was worn out by the time we got there! I was a little nervous about the kind of food I was going to be getting (I am a very picky eater) BUT they had my special k vanilla almond cereal and peanut butter (which I was told they did not have) so I was a very happy girl!

I am so excited to see the rest of Italy and will keep you updated as much as possible!! LOVE YOU ALL!!

ARRIVEDERCI (for now)!!!